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June 27, 2013

LPL Beefs Up Retirement Plan Platform

The IBD, along with Morningstar, Financial Finesse and Wealth Management Systems, adds tools for advisors, investors and employers

LPL Financial (LPLA) said Thursday that it has beefed up its retirement planning platform with tools for financial advisors and plan participants from Morningstar Associates, Financial Finesse and Wealth Management Systems.

With these new tools, the Worksite Financial Solutions platform, which LPL launched in early March, can serve as a more effective “end-to-end solution” for retirement plan sponsors and advisors, according to LPL, while better meeting the needs of plan participants with tools for financial education, personalized advice and account-transition services.

“Through our launch of Worksite Financial Solutions, we are seeking to completely reinvent the world of retirement plan financial advice, in order to counteract the current inadequate and fragmented system of retirement planning prevalent at so many workplaces in America today,” said Bill Chetney (left), executive vice president of LPL Financial Retirement Partners, in a press release.

“We are tremendously excited to work with some of the most outstanding and forward-thinking service providers in the industry, in order to give our nation’s workers the tools and resources they need to plan for all stages of their financial lives, including retirement, and to make our vision become a reality.”

In late March, LPL rolled out a program, the Retirement Partners Group, to recognize and support top financial advisors focused on advising retirement plans for corporate clients. The group was launched with 87 advisor members, who advise 4,000 retirement plans with nearly $40 billion in assets. It is staffed by about 65 LPL employees.

Of LPL’s 13,300 affiliated reps, about 1,400 have five or more retirement plans in their books of business, the independent broker-dealer said earlier this year. For most, this market represents about 25% or more of their total sales.

For the Worksite Financial Solutions platform, LPL's partners are contributing the following enhancements:

Morningstar is sharing its technology for the Employee Advice Solution, which lets advisors provide participants with personalized investment strategies; plan advisors can pick a strategist from choices on the platform to run the portfolio assignment process and deliver in-plan participant advice; and investors can choose ongoing professional investment-management or point-in-time advice.

Financial Finesse is providing financial-wellness content, which aims to help employees develop better financial habits and behaviors; its Financial Learning Center can give workers personalized assessments of their financial wellness, along with a detailed plan to help them improve their finances; plan sponsors receive aggregated reporting on the financial wellness of their workforce; and LPL advisors can use this information to develop tailored financial education programs for retirement-plan clients.

WMSI’s technology is bringing together plan and participant data from multiple recordkeeping systems, so advisors and plan sponsors can work with investors to move their retirement plan accounts as their switch jobs.